I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this update. I'm currently at 2,145 transferred thoughts from TheBrain; however, one has to keep in mind that in addition to the transfer process, I'm still creating notes daily that I used to develop in TheBrain, so there is a compounding effect going on during the transfer. I'm currently building my daily notes or my daily journal. In addition to journal entries, new blogs I've written are captured and cataloged, along with source material and general reading. Recent hikes and new summits are stored and posted by county on the right quadrangle MOC page.
I had the same transfer-generate system going with Notion until I discovered that Notion wouldn't be the solution I needed for my brain problem. It took almost as long to unwind my Notion data as it took to transfer. Thankfully, I have no such concerns regarding Obsidian at this point.
I experimented with adding notes from my Zettelkasten this week. I've been adding Zettel notes since I first started; however, I have been leaving the links dead, dead as in they are TheBrain links, not Obsidian connections. So this week, I converted a few of the ties over to Obsidian, and I'm excited about the results.
If you don't know what a Zettelkasten is, don't bother reading the remainder of this post. There are many thoughts on the internet about the methodology; frankly, probably very few thoughts on the subject accurately aligned with what the system's creator envisioned, including how I use it. The website; Zettelkasten.de likely has the most complete information of any of the sites; and includes an active forum. I no longer participate in the discussion, but I read some blog articles now and again. The best place to start learning about Zettelkasten if you are interested is Sascha Fast's Zettelkasten Introduction.
Perhaps my favorite blog article from the website is Gerrit Scholle's (gescho) "The Zettelkasten as a Lattice of Thought Strings." in which Mr. Scholle provides excellent words and graphics to help explain the methodology behind gathering information and linking disparate parts together. The visualization he illustrates is one of the reasons I switched to Obsidian. Again I won't spend a lot of time here; you can read the article yourself; however, Mr. Scholle makes two critical points that I have tried to replicate. First is his reference to "strings of thought." Second, Mr. Scholle references these strings early in his article (first paragraph) and later as he explains "sequential notes" from different sources.
"Sequential notes" illustrates how I was keeping notes using TheBrain, and I was disappointed when attempting to view the chain of thoughts inside TheBrain's plex; I could only consider three or at most four links in the chain. With Obsidian, however, I can view the entire chain and follow it through the field of view to observe connections. My goal was to reinforce the concept that as notes connect across sources, new ideas appear, and as Mr. Scholle comments and illustrates, "A new (pink) molecule appears!" Seeing the connections and links within the Obsidian view plex is exciting. I color code the Zettel notes red when a connection is made, and all notes in the chain remain light gray until that connection is produced.
The connections make it possible to follow either the author's original sequence of thought by following the chain starting with the book and chapter; or follow the emergent knowledge sequence as the thread jumps from chain to chain. Both are compelling to see in the outline of Obsidian View.
Written October 5, 2022